Parwy's Blog: April 2012

22 April 2012

VMWare getting sounding working with linux host and windows guest

Installed VMWare Player to have a windows guess running on my linux host. I found the sound wasn't working well, sounding distorted and clipped.

Fixed this by:

a) Running 'aplay -L' and finding the entry for my soundcard beginning with "front". In my case the entry was "front:CARD=Intel,DEV=0".

b) Edit my vm config file "Windows Vista.vmx" and changing the following entries to:
sound.fileName = "front:CARD=Intel,DEV=0"
sound.autodetect = "FALSE"

Thanks to this post for the solution.

21 April 2012

Idempotence Is Not a Medical Condition - ACM Queue

In a world full of retried messages, idempotence is an essential property for reliable systems. Idempotence is a mathematical term meaning that performing an operation multiple times will have the same effect as performing it exactly one time. The challenges occur when messages are related to each other and may have ordering constraints. How are messages associated? What can go wrong? How can an application developer build a correctly functioning app without losing his or her mojo?

14 April 2012

An Introduction to NoSQL Patterns | Architects Zone

Regaining root on Google Nexus S following 4.0.4 OTA update

My phone has
1) the bootloader unlocked
2) usb debug mode enabled

My PC has
1) the Android SDK installed to use adb and fastbook

To regain root following an OTA update

1) Download "ClockworkMod Touch" recovery from http://www.clockworkmod.com/rommanager to C:\sekhonp\installation\

2) Download su from http://download.clockworkmod.com/test/su.zip to C:\sekhonp\installation\

3) Plugin phone into usb port and ensure usb debug mode is on

4) cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools"

5) adb push C:\sekhonp\installation\su.zip /sdcard/

6) reboot phone into bootloader menu, but don't switch to recovery mode

7) ..\tools\fastboot flash recovery C:\sekhonp\installation\recovery-clockwork-touch-5.8.0.2-crespo.img (replace path with downloaded image)

8) Switch into recovery mode and install /sdcard/su.zip

9) Reboot

10) Open Root Explorer, change to /etc, mount r/w, delete /etc/install-recovery.sh, mount r/o

11) Open Rom Manager and flash "ClockworkMod Touch" recovery (as it would have been deleted by /etc/install-recovery.sh in previous reboot)